The Editor (2014)

SEPTEMBER 7, 2015

GENRE: COMEDIC, GIALLO
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

A few years ago I had an idea for a giallo send-up, but never really developed it because I realized I hadn't seen as many films in the sub-genre as I wish I could say I had, and thus I felt under-qualified to joke about them, even lovingly. The team at Astron-6 either didn't have that hang-up (or, more likely, had just seen more of them), because The Editor is more or less in line with what I would have done, which is to make up a new giallo story (as opposed to directly parodying a particular film) but present it in a comical way that pays tribute while also taking the piss out of some of the sub-genre's traditions. The black gloves, the misogynist heroes, the nonsensical asides that don't add up... it's all here, and for the most part it works a lot better than I expected it to.

In fact, the only major issue is that the performances are all over the place, with some of the actors playing it straight (and thus making it funnier), while others are stopping just shy of actually winking at the camera. When the biggest offender is one of the writer/directors (Matthew Kennedy) it's hard to really say he's "doing it wrong", because it's kind of his call - but I much preferred Adam Brooks' (also writer/director) more subdued performance, as it felt more like something I would really see in one of these movies (ditto Udo Kier, who has a brief role as a doctor that could easily have been transplanted from a genuine entry). I can only assume they figured the joke would be TOO subtle unless some of the actors were letting you know that they were in on the joke (ditto for the dubbing; only a couple characters are dubbed, enough to enjoy the reference without it overpowering the movie), and they might be right.

Because it's actually a pretty good story! They smartly combine an older, standard murder mystery with a more modern (well, modern for the giallo heyday, meaning the 80s) reflexive concept, as our primary characters are the cast/crew of a genre film, a production that is getting quite chaotic as people keep dying. The producer vows to keep shooting at all costs, so maybe the killer is one of the actors, murdering co-stars to beef up his/her role? Or is it the title character, who is said to have spent time in an institution after cutting off some of his own fingers (and nearly killing a colleague) in a bizarre accident? I wouldn't say it's IMPOSSIBLE to figure it out, but it's actually fairly satisfying as a mystery, with the weirdo supernatural elements (such as the editor transporting into his Steenbeck) adding some of that Fulci flair (The Beyond is just as much an influence as Deep Red or whatever). At times, it's actually more successful than Berberian Sound Studio, which was the straight version of a similar story - not a bad feat for a "parody".

And that's the thing, it's more in line with Naked Gun or the recent They Came Together in that it's not doing any direct parodies of any particular film (i.e. the Hot Shots style) - it's just a funny version of the general idea of one. Sure, you might spot a direct reference to Murder Rock or even Dressed to Kill (!), but these are just quick plot points of little consequence - the overall concept and major scenes are wholly original, just "at home" within the sub-genre. It's a tough thing to pull off (and even harder to market - They Came Together was basically sent direct to video for this reason), and I think you genuinely have to love the movies to do it. Like a good roast, you can't just be mocking the roastee out of nowhere - it has to come from a place of real affection. Like, I could do something like this for slashers fairly well (well, if I had any skill as a screenwriter I mean), but if I did a haunted house version it'd just be me mercilessly mocking its tropes and saying "fuck you" to the basic idea of them. I think that's why the Epic Movie guys are so bad at what they do - they're just mocking whatever's popular, instead of taking on a type of movie they care about. You don't have to think the movies are infallible (because they're not), but you DO have to love them anyway, or else you'll end up with cynical crap.

Since the Astron-6 team was behind Manborg (albeit with the core members taking different roles), I was afraid that they'd use visual FX for the blood, since they seem to like that "intentionally fake" aesthetic and also because I know they don't work with very high budgets (a lot of indie producers I have talked to claim that they have to go digital with their blood because they don't have time/resources to do it on set, forced to get it done cheap/free in post production). But no! They spray gallons of the good stuff, and even have two kinds - a more realistic looking dark red, and a more pinkish one for the in-movie scenes, matching the "melted crayon" look of those older films. The digital photography betrays them, but otherwise they have done a pretty good job of matching the look of the films that influenced it - it's got the vivid colors, the zooms, the bold font for the credits (I particularly appreciated that touch), and the music - even some by Claudio Simonetti himself (sourced, I assume - I'm not enough of a connoisseur to know for sure).

As with Manborg (I still haven't seen Father's Day! I should fix that) the disc comes jam-packed with bonus features, including a nearly hour long documentary about its production. As you can expect, it wasn't the smoothest shoot, with the crew almost entirely running out of money with only 20% of its scenes shot, picture cars not working (you get to see Kennedy attempt to finish breaking off the muffler that was already hanging on the ground), and occasional other snafus, the sort of thing you'll never see on a studio Blu-ray. The commentary by Kennedy, Brooks, and co-writer/star Conor Sweeney is also pretty fun; they point out some of the references and other production snafus not covered in the making of, and heap praises on all of their crew (I also enjoyed the note that they actually had the money to pay someone to do one particular effect and thus demanded perfection). There are also a few deleted scenes of minor merit; I think they cut the best joke about the cop slapping the female characters around (it's something of a running gag), but the others were good calls to delete. The other bonus features are a bit too jokey for my tastes (like the poster artist having a sci-fi machine create the art for him), as the "no one is getting paid" gag wears a bit thin, but they're quirky and thus in line with the DIY feel of Astron's productions.

The Editor is for such a specific audience that I can't imagine it will be a big seller for Scream Factory right out of the gate, but I think this will continue to find fans for a long time. It's not perfect (it could be shorter for sure) and there will always be people thinking that they're mocking these movies without any love for them (something the making of should make clear isn't the case, with one of the directors arguing to shoot a scene a different way so that it feels more like The Beyond than CSI - you don't get THAT into it when you just want to make fun of something for the hell of it), but I like what they were going for, and appreciative of the parts that nailed it. The problem with a lot of these modern "love letter" movies is that they're not adding anything of value of their own, but that's not the case here. Astron-6 has created a giallo plot that I wish I could have seen done for real, and I just take solace knowing that when I laugh at it, it's intentional.

What say you?

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Backcountry (2014)

AUGUST 29, 2015

GENRE: PREDATOR, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

On the bonus features for Backcountry, one of the producers proudly explains that they wanted to make this movie to show the woman becoming the hero and (spoiler) surviving, in a manner that suggests that such a thing never happens. Which is odd, because while I liked the movie, all but one of the ones it reminded me of while watching also had the woman survive, to the point where I actually had to stop and think if there was EVER one where the male lived when the female did not - even The Reef, which is based on a true story in which the male survived, was changed to let the female live. Needless to say, it's pretty standard in this sub-genre to keep the female lead alive (if battered), or just kill them both like Open Water, so I have no idea what the hell he was talking about.

But after 16+ years of DVD supplements, I'm used to listening to/rolling my eyes at producers who assume every horror movie is misogynist garbage (and that they're reinventing the wheel), so I won't hold it against the film. I AM a bit puzzled that they hide their bear for so long, even trying not once but twice to suggest that a human villain might be the thing that turns our hero couple's idyllic vacation into a nightmare. I mean, they had to have known that the film's marketing would be BEAR! BEAR BEAR BEAR! BEAAAAAAAAAARRRR! so the fact that it's treated as almost a surprise in the movie is kind of odd, and also puts the film dangerously close to "boring and padded" territory. I mean, sure, we expect (need!) some time to get to know our characters and establish the possible threat, but it's literally an hour into the movie (almost to the second) before he finally shows up, and then after some business he exits again for the final 15 minutes. And I don't mean they hide him, like Jaws ; there isn't an opening attack on some randoms, or a warning from a local - there's just no bear.

Then again, it's a real bear, in real shots with the actors, so you can understand why his presence had to be reduced (why they couldn't crib from Jaws and just have him doing stuff off-screen, I'm not sure). The editing is frustratingly quick-cut during the more exciting scenes, and I'd like to think it was just cutting around whatever safety measures they had in place, or because they could only get a few frames, but it's just as obnoxiously hyper-edited during non-bear scenes, like when our hero Jenn (Missy Peregrym) tumbles down a hill and we get something like half a second of GoPro footage tossed in as she falls. I can't and won't understand what the appeal of this sort of editing is when you're obviously sending the actor (or her stunt double) down a hill anyway - zoom out a bit and show it in longer takes! It denies us the experience of feeling each crunch and smack.

That said, the big bear attack is pretty tense, and surprisingly gory - director Adam MacDonald does not shy away from blood or prosthetic makeup in this sequence, allowing us a glimpse of a half torn-off face, a mostly eaten leg, etc. Some of the things he tries don't really work for me (muting the sound at random points, for example), but it's still a pretty harrowing sequence that is worth the wait - I just couldn't help think if it should have came maybe 10 minutes earlier. See, apart from the boyfriend poopooing Jenn's insistence on bringing bear spray along for their camping trip (it might as well be called Foreshadow Spray), there isn't much of a hint at a bear presence at all until the half hour mark, at which point you get little clues: a footprint, a possible bear howl, etc. And those are good to buy the movie some time, but the give and take is slightly extended too far - it's basically a spoiler to say the bear shows up at all, considering where it happens in the film. This movie will forever be described as "A couple encounters a bear" and based on when that happens it'd be like describing Halloween as a movie about a babysitter who leaves her kids alone to check on her friends across the street.

And the couple's standard relationship woes aren't all that novel, either - Jenn works too much and emasculates him! He doesn't hit the marks on boyfriend quizzes from a magazine! It finally gets interesting when Alex gets them lost and she starts shouting at how he always fucks everything up and he's a loser... and then he admits he was going to propose to her. Again, this is nothing new - horror movies are littered with engagement rings being put on after the would-be groom has been killed, but I can't recall one where the guy was called a loser right before it would have happened. I only wish the bear had attacked right then and there and REALLY killed the moment. However, they DO introduce an amazing wrench in the works via Eric Balfour, as an Irish (huh?) outdoorsman type who takes a liking to Jenn and engages in one of the longest pissing matches in cinema history with Alex - it's like 10 straight minutes of Balfour baiting this guy at every other line (right down to overruling his choice of potatoes or veggies to cook along with the fish he made), and at one point it gets just as tense as the damn bear scene. Again, it's part of a bizarre attempt to make us think that Balfour might be a serial killer or something, but even though their ruse failed it didn't make the scene any less interesting (it's certainly better than the equally bungled bid to make the park ranger look suspicious too).

So as far as these kind of movies go, it's not as good as Frozen or Open Water, but it's a lot better than The Canyon and Open Water 2. If you saw Thirst, which was this but in the desert instead of the woods (and wolves instead of a bear), it's on par with that - a harmless, well-made movie that will remind you why you should never ever travel anywhere. Also, hilariously, in that review I mentioned my weird theory on how a couple's position in bed determines their fate, and this movie is another piece of evidence that my theory is correct, something I had noted long before I re-read my Canyon review (I didn't even remember that I had written this goofy idea down at all, let alone in a review I'd be namechecking). I think the key to enjoying these survival movies depends on how likely you are to find yourself in the situation depicted, which is why I loved Frozen (I ski!) but had more issues with woods/desert ones, since I'm the kind of guy who prefers family campgrounds with electricity and running water than "roughing it".

Oh, most of the bonus features are pretty standard; the commentary has the director and the actors so you get a little bit of everything, though some of it is repeated on the making of piece, and it's far from a must-listen. However, I flat out LOVED "Bear Shots", which is a collection of homemade footage showing the kinds of shots that the director needed of the bear, which was requested from the bear's trainer. Playing the bear in these shots: the director's cats, with accompanying growls and scary music - if you're a cat owner like me it will probably be pretty damn amusing to you. The trailer and a still gallery is also included, because by law they have to be on a Scream Factory release, I think.

What say you?

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Cub [Welp] (2014)

AUGUST 25, 2015

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Hurrah! I haven't gone soft! If you've read the majority of my recent reviews, you'd know that I get worked up about dead kids/bad parents/killer kids/etc type material in my horror movies now that I have a child of my own, but Cub played just as well to me as it would have two years ago. The plot is about a killer lurking around where a cub scout troop had set up their camp in the woods, and damned if I didn't think at one point "I hope they have the balls to kill at least one of these little kids!" That's the guy I used to be! Welcome back, unfeeling asshole!

As for my "prayers", they were answered, though I won't go into anything specific like a number. Being that it's a slasher film you know that the six adults are goners (well, five of them - more on that soon), and that's just enough to satisfy bloodthirsty slasher fans such as myself, especially since it's only 84 minutes long and it's not like we're being barraged by the things every week like in the early 80s. But fear not, if you want to think about the reality of the world Jonas Govaerts (and co-writer Roel Mondelaers) created here, some parents will be getting sad phone calls about their 12-ish sons. It may not be as gruesome as Weird Al's "Nature Trail To Hell" ("There's a homicidal maniac who finds a cub scout troop/And he hacks up two or three in every scene!") but my jaw dropped at one point, so that should count for something.

I'm not sure WHY it didn't get under my skin, though I suspect it has something to do with the anonymity of the kids. We really only get to know a few of them (there's about a dozen), with the others just sort of there in group scenes and given identities in throwaway dialogue (like a game of "Simon Says" when a couple of them are disqualified by name). And we spend most of our time with one of them, Sam, introduced as the obligatory quiet kid who didn't really want to be there and of course the only one to notice something is wrong. See, the scout leaders (both 20ish guys) tell a story of Kai, a werewolf boy who haunts the woods and will get you if you're bad - standard boogeyman stuff invented to keep the impressionable kids in line. But as it turns out, there really IS a Kai (or at least, someone who fits the "made up" description), and he's the one stealing their food and such, but of course no one believes Sam - they just think it's him telling stories to cover his own crimes.

But there are some twists to this seemingly traditional "Boy Who Cried Wolf" scenario, played against the backdrop of a standard (but well-done) woods-based slasher movie. Before long we discover that there's a full grown, typically silent and hulking killer in the area as well, operating not unlike Jason in the Platinum Dunes remake: he's got a lair, as well as traps set up around the woods that provide a hefty chunk of the movie's kill scenes. I particularly liked the one where setting off the trap resulted in an arrow firing into a hornet's nest, and continuing on to impale a victim, nest now pinned to him. We can all agree that CGI should appear as often in slasher movie kill scenes as nudity in a kiddie flick, but this is the rare exception where I had no problem with it - the CGI hornets won't win any awards, but it's being used for a fun/inventive kill that couldn't be done traditionally. They go practical where it counts (blood) and that's what matters most.

So then you have to ask yourself if the killer and "Kai" are working together, or if the latter is actually just some innocent and hungry feral kid. As Sam takes a liking to him (and Kai later protects him from an animal attack) you will also start to wonder if Sam will live up to his reputation as a weirdo, or find a way to get through to his fellow scouts who mostly hate him and save the day. In other words, there's more going on on a narrative level than you might expect from a movie that involves a killer in the woods, more than making up for its few missteps - such as a bizarre omission that I had to double check (via Twitter) to make sure I hadn't just dozed off or gotten a glitched disc or something. Early on we meet two local assholes who become instant enemies of our two hero scout leaders, but while one of them gets his obligatory death (the hornets, in fact), the other just disappears. I kept waiting for him to show up looking for his brother, and then kept assuming Sam or someone would stumble across his body, but that moment never came. Two of the cub scouts also basically vanish after a close call with death, which irked me even more than the asshole guy's unceremonious exit. It'd be like if Lynda and Bob disappeared from Halloween after we saw Michael watching them fool around on the couch.

Then again, this is a first time feature from a guy who used indiegogo to fund the film (they're listed at the top along with the regular production companies), so just being watchable already puts him above par for the course. That it's actually quite good and a fine modern slasher (one of the best I've seen since Cold Prey, in fact - not a huge number of options, I know, but still) is damn laudable. The Blu-ray has some bonus features, including a short film and a music video, but some are actually relevant to the film. A pair of deleted scenes is probably the most intriguing, particularly the first which shows a glimpse of Sam's seemingly very normal home life, so I'm glad they cut it as it makes him more of an enigma. The other supplement worth a look is a breakdown of the VFX, which were mostly used to add depth to the shots (more trees, mountains, etc) but you'll probably be surprised to discover the use of CGI in another shot. It's a reminder of how the knee-jerk reaction to visual FX is a silly one - it's a tool that should be used invisibly (or to the best of current abilities for things that can't be achieved in any other way), and thus it's nothing to shit on in general.

I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that the slasher movie will never be as dominant as it once was, but as long as we keep getting the occasional gem like this, it makes up for the reduction. Sort of like your favorite band putting out an album - as much as you might love it, there's always that sort of sad feeling that it'll be 2-3 years before they make another. The Hollywood attempts to revive it are non-existent; not counting sequels to proven franchises (and even that doesn't always work out - see Scream 4) the last wide release original slasher that I can think of was My Soul To Take, which barely counts (more traditional - you have to go back to 2006 with See No Evil). It's the little indies and foreign films like this and Stage Fright that are keeping the genre alive for lifers like me, and I personally thank filmmakers like Govaerts for fighting the good fight.

What say you?

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Sinister 2 (2015)

AUGUST 21, 2015

GENRE: KILLER KID, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I was a pretty vocal champion of the first Sinister, and when I tallied up my favorite genre films of that year it came in behind only two others (and this was back when I saw 365+ horror movies a year, of course). One of those two films was Citadel*, so you can imagine I was pretty damn excited when the director of the latter signed on for Sinister 2, which would retain the writers of the first film. I didn't think it particularly NEEDED a sequel, but I figured the creative team and new characters (obviously) would give it enough of a spark to warrant a pass, especially in a year that's been painfully short on R-rated horror. Alas, as the saying goes: if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. The trailers didn't excite me much, but I still went in optimistic... only to leave disappointed. At best it felt like a DTV sequel (one that would have a much higher number than "2") that I'd watch at home and say it wasn't bad for a DTV sequel before forgetting that it existed, but that's hardly a ringing endorsement.

It's got a couple things in its corner, so I'll get to those first. The home movies return, and while none of them are as good as the original's "Lawn Work", there's a pretty good mix of pretty evil shit on display, including one family who is killed by the kid doing the "rat and bucket" torture we saw in 2 Fast 2 Furious. You almost get the impression the writers sat around coming up with crazy scenarios, not unlike the Saw guys coming up with the new traps. And while I originally groaned at the use of Night of the Living Dead on a TV (way overused in horror films due to its public domain status), it's the rare case of it actually making sense - the scene they're watching is of the little girl killing her mom. Sure, it's foreshadowing something we already know is gonna happen since this is a sequel to a movie where a little kid killed their parents, but for those three or four people watching this without having seen the first, it's a fun little throwaway clue.

And while I missed Ethan Hawke (and his fantastic sweater), James Ransome's Deputy So-and-So returns and takes center stage, so I was kind of charmed that this awkward, kinda goofy guy not too much unlike myself was the hero in a horror movie. When I heard he was returning as the lead I figured they'd shed him of his quirks and make him more of a traditional hero, but nope! If anything he's even more skittish, so it's kind of fun seeing that kind of character reacting to the usual horror movie nonsense (jump scares, reveals, etc). There's a scene where he has to stand up to some crooked cops, and when he actually succeeds he lets out this huge gasp, as if he was shocked it actually worked - I loved that bit. Even during the big climax, he's kind of a goon, pitifully hiding behind a desk and almost instantly getting trapped when the ghosts push it against the wall.

But his expanded role also hurts the movie in two ways. One is that they continue the "So-and-so" joke to a distracting degree. In the first he was a supporting character who only really dealt with Hawke's character, so it was a harmless, amusing little gag. But not so much here - he shows up at Shannyn Sossamon's house (she's the single mom with two boys who serves as this movie's main family) and she never asks his name, nor does her ex or the cops he brings with him when they show up later and try to get the boys back from her (it's the rare movie to present a nasty custody battle between two characters we don't really know). Like they have no idea who he is, and no one bothers to ask (even after he confronts them! Not even a rhetorical "Who the hell are you?"), which is absurd. A friend even calls him on the phone and calls him "Deputy" (even though he's no longer a deputy, having been fired for his transgressions in the first film), and while text messages from Sossamon's phone play a minor role, we only see his screen, never hers (which would almost assuredly have his name listed). I mean, Christ - was it really that important to retain this "detail" that they had to go out of their way to avoid giving him a damn name?

The other is more damaging - he's way behind the audience, even though we're supposed to be seeing these events through his eyes. An hour into the movie (more?) he visits a colleague of the Vincent D'Onofrio character from the first film (who sits this one out, he's mysteriously disappeared but left all of his research to this guy), who plays him some recordings from Norway (!) and we learn that Boogie always needs some sort of physical record - not necessarily film as we've seen so far (audio, artwork - anything works as long as it's evidence of his existence, which allows him to continue it). That's fine, but the movie then adds to the exposition dump and stops cold to inform So-and-so (and thus the audience) that Boogie... uses kids to do his deeds! You know, something we learned in the last movie and have been watching 60+ minutes of this one fully aware. The scene is shot/written/edited as if it should be just as big of a surprise to us at it was to him, and it was only at this point I realized So-and-So hadn't actually known that all along. I assumed all of his research (he's got one of those big boards, with red yarn connecting spots on a map and everything!) and the fact that he's been traveling around burning down "Boogie houses" to try to stop the cycle had informed him of the obvious link that the kids were doing it - never even crossed my mind he wouldn't have been aware of it by that point.

But at least his scenes are still entertaining in their little way, unlike the ones with Sossamon and her kids, which are tiresome and weighed down by a sub-Lifetime movie storyline about her one-note, abusive ex. There's a kernel of a good idea about Boogie's target being a dysfunctional family instead of the seemingly all-American normal ones we see in all of the home movies, but the husband's cartoonish villainy (he beats So-and-So to a pulp for no real reason, slaps one of the sons around for not eating his mashed potatoes, etc - it's about one step away from William Forsythe's stepfather asshole in Rob Zombie's Halloween) keeps it from ever being remotely interesting, because it's too simplistic and cliched to register. The original had the fine subplot of Hawke's declining career (and accompanying financial struggles), giving him (and his wife) some three-dimensional qualities you aren't always going to find in horror, but this mustache-twirling tyrant is seemingly the only thing that gives Sossamon's character a personality at all. She restores furniture, and hides a smoking habit, and... uh, that's it. If the husband hadn't found her it's possible she'd just be fixing up her old chairs and not really noticing that her sons were in some serious need of counseling.

See, the other key difference is that this time we're seeing Boogie work his "charms" on the kid, focusing on the would-be killer instead of his eventual victims. And the boys are twins, so the filmmakers get to have some fun with the idea that either one of them might be Boogie's next disciple (or, even cooler, maybe they'd fight over who got to be the chosen one). This means we get a lot more of the ghost kids that everyone hated in the first movie (that scene where Hawke walks around his house as ghost kids jump around like assholes all around him is the only part of the movie I didn't like), as they visit the more obvious kid (the quieter one) every night and make him watch another home movie. They even load the film for him! But he keeps resisting their attempts to recruit him, so finally his brother - more aggressive, like his dad - takes his place. But again, while this may be exciting to someone who hadn't seen the original (or even the trailer for this one, which focused heavily on its final reel), we know where it's headed, so watching them stretch it out, crawling to its inevitable conclusion, is far from riveting cinema. The only question is whether or not this kid will succeed - will he kill his family, or will someone stop him this time? As you might expect, waiting for the final 5 minutes for the movie to spring its only real source of suspense at us isn't really that great of an idea.

And that's the thing about the movie as a whole - there's no sense of surprise. The new details about Boogie aren't that exciting (he's... been to Norway?), the characters are all way behind the audience's knowledge of what's going on, and (spoiler of sorts) they don't really have the balls to do anything crazy. The R rating is mostly earned from the 8mm movies of people we don't know being killed and Sossamon's potty mouth, and I sincerely doubt the MPAA would have given it an R simply for being too scary like they did with The Conjuring. The jump scares aren't that effective (the best one was spoiled in the trailer) and there's no impending sense of dread like the original offered - I almost started to wish one of the boys suffered from night terrors. With the audience already likely to show up they should have used the opportunity to go even darker this time, taking the risk they can certainly afford (it's a Blumhouse movie, after all - profitability is guaranteed), but instead they went the other way - it felt tamer. Hell, they couldn't even trigger my over-reactive dad mechanism - normally over the past year I'd be bummed out/worked up with so many dead kids, but if anything I just felt bad that I brought my son to daycare early this morning so I could get to the theater and see this almost shockingly half-assed affair. I'd rather listen to the goddamn Alphabet Song for the millionth time (it seems every other toy he owns will play it) than watch a horror sequel go through the motions so soon in a would-be franchise.

What say you?

*Attack the Block was the other. No connection to Sinister 2, far as I can tell. Though I DID momentarily ponder how interesting an inner-city, apartment complex setting might be for this sort of thing.

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The Harvest (2013)

AUGUST 17, 2015

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I hope you haven't had it up to here with me talking about my baby Will, because otherwise you'll be skipping quite a bit of this review of The Harvest, John McNaughton's long-awaited return to feature filmmaking. But I'll save that for the next paragraph and just let you know that this is a pretty great dramatic thriller, and that's not me acting like a fearful producer or publicist - whatever you might hear, this is NOT a horror movie in the usual way. Scary (to parents), sure, but even the thriller elements are confined to a few key scenes - you should watch this as a sad/dark character drama first, thriller second, for it to work at its full potential. Granted, a new McNaughton film should be enough to excite you, but some might hear his name and "horror" and expect another Henry - this is most certainly not the case.

But honestly, I'd rather watch Henry's most uncomfortable scenes on a loop for an eternity than ever have to face the situation our protagonists do here. Michael Shannon and Samantha Morton play a couple whose only son is suffering from illness, unable to walk and mostly confined to his bed. Andy makes the acquaintance of Maryann, a new girl in town who lives nearby with her grandparents, but his parents are hellbent on keeping them from spending too much time together (though Shannon seems at least slightly more open to the idea). Around the halfway point we discover why (SPOILER): there's another child in the basement, in a coma and about the same age as Andy. Maryann does some sleuthing and discovers that there was a kidnapped boy that fits the description, and if you're unsure what they're up to, look at the title again (and did I mention that Morton's character is a doctor?).

So basically you have 100 minutes of every parent's nightmare rolled into one. The kidnapped boy's parents aren't in the movie, and thank Christ for that because it was hard enough watching Shannon and Morton deal with their sick kid - I don't know if I could handle seeing the anguish of parents whose child had been snatched away from them. Plus it would make my mental turmoil even harder to deal with - I am very much of the opinion that there is absolutely nothing I wouldn't do to keep my son alive and well, but would that extend to taking someone else's child? Luckily for that theoretical other kid I'm not a doctor, so if Will ever needed an organ donor I'd have to go through the proper channels, but putting myself in Morton's shoes - she had the ability to keep her son alive (and presumably, no way of getting him higher on the organ transplant list) and acted on that. Bad as I feel for the other, unseen family, I can't really side against her on that one. I panic every time Will coughs - no telling what I'd do if it was anything serious.

And it's not even that stuff that smacked my gut over and over, as it deals with other parental nightmares too. There's a scene where Shannon looks at a photo album and sees a picture of him with their son, both happy (and, twisting the knife, the boy about Will's age), coupled with another scene where he tries to bond with the kid as he plays a video game, failing miserably - that one hurt just as much as the sick kid stuff. My dad and I didn't have much in common, and that hurt enough when he died - it hurts even more now that I have a son of my own, wondering if the same thing will happen to me someday (his current obsession with bouncing balls is troubling - Stephen Hawking could probably beat me at any sports game). I can't reconcile the idea that the little boy who laughs maniacally when I come home from work and races over to me to clutch at my leg might someday have nothing to say to me, so seeing it happen to Shannon (one of our greatest actors who can sell that pain with a mere flutter of the eyes) was no picnic.

(Oh, on the sports note - it even has a scene where a kid is nearly killed playing softball. Like I said, it's EVERY parent's fear in one movie.)

Worse, Morton is even more tyrannical when it comes to sheltering him from having friends. When she learns he's snuck her into the house to play video games she freaks out: throws out his toys, demolishes the corn he was growing outside (title has two meanings!), and worst of all, shows no concern for when he falls out of his bed trying to plead with her to stop. And then she slams his fingers in the door when she storms out! It's brutal to watch; luckily I don't really fear my wife or I ever stooping that low but it was still far more upsetting for me to see than any random murder in a typical horror movie (similar to the scenes in Babadook when the mother loses her cool with her kid - and this tyke isn't annoying!). Ultimately we learn a bit more about why she's so uncaring toward his wellbeing, softening those blows (if retroactively), but man - to sum up, this movie is not an easy watch at times, and I wonder how unnerved I'd feel about it two years ago, when I was still just a childless schmuck who only had two cats to worry about.

Because all that said, the movie itself leaves a little to be desired. Strip away my omnipresent parental hangups, and what's left is a pretty good but slightly undercooked drama that hinges on a couple of reveals and some great performances. In fact I can't help but wonder if it might work as well or better as a stage play, as most of it takes place in their house (and the few scenes that don't could easily be transplanted there) and the performances are the main reason to see it. The thriller elements aren't strong enough for it to really stick out in that regard (there's even a "get out of the house before someone catches you" scene, which is to the thriller as a car not starting is to a horror movie), and some plot points could have used another draft or two to clarify or strengthen - particularly the kidnapped boy's origins. The final scene is also technically happy but kind of confusing as well (can't explain without spoilers), as if it was tacked on late, or given the slightly long runtime, if there was more to the final scene that was cut to move things along. Unusual for a Scream Factory release (with IFC), the disc doesn't have any extras at all, so there's no deleted scenes or commentary to clarify such things.

But it's definitely worth a look, whether you're a parent or not. It's a shame some are trying to pin it as a horror movie, because I think that will just set viewers up for massive disappointment (indeed, I was kind of assuming it was a slow burn thing with something far more insidious going on in the basement; luckily I reset my expectations in time). Sure, it's ironic that this non-horror movie unnerved me more than 99% of traditional scare flicks, but the label evokes something this movie doesn't even attempt to offer, so it's misleading and kind of insulting. And it's not like McNaughton only works in the horror genre (out of 7 or 8 features, only 2 are horror), so it's even stranger attempt. A couple of startling moments does not a horror movie make - and it's not worth potentially turning away horror-phobic viewers from seeing such great performances.

What say you?

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The Human Centipede 3 [Final Sequence] (2015)

AUGUST 1, 2015

GENRE: COMEDIC, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: STREAMING

"It’s actually much tamer than I was expecting" - BC, Human Centipede 1 review
"I kind of admire the attitude Six took with his approach to a followup, and... I find myself actually excited about the upcoming third film." - BC, Human Centipede 2 review

With that, on the behalf of anyone else who gave these movies a pass I'd like to apologize for the existence of The Human Centipede 3 [Final Sequence]. Apparently, people like me didn't learn our lesson last time, and now Tom Six has taken it upon himself to push our endurance even further, with a film so ugly that racial slurs barely even register. The "point" of this movie (and possibly the series as a whole) is pretty easy to discern, when Dieter Laser's character (a sadistic prison warden - he's not playing his HC1 character), dressed in attire much like that of Tom Six himself, comes across a prisoner who WANTS to be part of a human centipede. Laser instantly shoots him dead while screaming "I don't want anyone liking this!", and then it finally hit me: we were never supposed to enjoy even the first film of this series.

Seriously, what else could one possibly take away from that moment? It can't be coincidence that Laser is dressed as Six (since Six even appears in the movie as himself, wearing a nearly identical outfit, it's not like it requires you to have insider knowledge to see the connection, he puts it into the goddamn movie), and he is literally angry that someone might actually be enjoying the idea of a human centipede. So I have no choice but to believe he was somehow angry (or at least, surprised) that people made comments like mine on his first movie, prompting his much more vile sequel, and then when some folks (again, like me, albeit not nearly as enthusiastic as I was for the first) didn't write him off after that, he decided he had to be a bit more blunt. OK, Mr. Six - you win. I hated your new movie and won't watch a fourth one if you inflict one upon us. Are you happy now?

So what's the difference between this and the last one? Well, once again (as predicted) we learn that the previous movie was just a movie, one quite enjoyed by an accountant played by Laurence Harvey (the actor who played the protagonist in HC2, also as a new character who doesn't notice the physical resemblance to the guy he's watching on screen) but very much hated by his boss (Laser's warden character). The warden is a total psychopath who abuses his prisoners in a variety of ways (including waterboarding with boiling water) and forces his assistant (Bree Olson, the film's only female character) to fellate him on the regular. Somehow even worse than that is Laser's insistence on screaming every one of his lines in an accent that can best be described as a bad, half-drunk Al Pacino impression, which I assume is supposed to be funny but often just made me reaching to turn on the subtitles. Harvey fares a bit better playing a weak-willed right hand man of sorts, though his role mostly consists of endlessly pleading with Laser to hear an idea he has.

After a half hour or so of this bullshit (which includes Laser eating from a jar of severed, dried clitorises, plus other prisoner torture scenes, including a graphic castration), Harvey finally gets to explain his idea: turning all of the prisoners (500+) in a giant human centipede, which will not only satisfy his boss' need for inflicting trauma on his prisoners, but also save the state some money on food and other expenditures (plus deter crime on the outside world, as no one would want to commit murder, rape, theft, etc if it meant they might end up in one). The warden is into the idea, and shows the prisoners the first two films to let them know what they're in for. This causes a riot, in which Olson is beaten nearly to death for no real reason (other than to allow Laser to rape her while she's in a coma), but it's settled rather quickly and the warden is free to carry out his plan. This involves killing a few more prisoners (including one with a colostomy bag who wouldn't be able to fit into the centipede properly) and other tone-deaf attempts at humor, so by the time the centipede is actually formed the (painfully long 102 minute) movie is just about over.

Speaking of the length, I'm almost willing to bet that the movie was never actually edited. Full-screen titles usually include the editor's credit, and in the rare instances that he/she is not given the respect of their own card, they'll be listed pretty early in the scrolling part of the credits. But here it's buried beneath the caterer, almost at the very end, making me wonder if the "editor" was merely the person responsible for taking all of Six' garbage footage and putting it in order. Scenes go on forever, any number of them could have been cut outright (if anyone can justify the dream sequence where Laser is stabbed and then raped in the wound, by all means let's hear it), and there's no flow whatsoever - it's just THERE. Sure, they might have spent some time making sure the color matched and the sound editing was up to standards, but I honestly can't see Six, an editor, and maybe a producer sitting there debating over whether or not to trim down the scene where Laser fires his gun into the prison's ceiling over and over for no discernible reason. Christ, even though fellow abuse factory Salo is actually longer, its less of an endurance - and that's not even played for laughs!

The sad thing is that there's a kernel of an interesting idea here, though it would have worked better if the first sequel hadn't already explored the idea of someone seeing the movie and trying to copy it. It's taken to ridiculous extremes, of course (and it involves a human caterpillar, which is the same thing but also with their limbs removed), but since the prison is basically a torture camp I think it's almost amusing that the maven of such activity would get "better" ideas from a horror movie (the prisoners also shout things that are taken verbatim from bad reviews of the movies, which I found pretty hilarious). I also somewhat enjoyed the doctor character, played by 80s mainstay Clayton Rohner, who was kind of giddy about trying something so insane. Perhaps if Laser was restrained (or the role just given to someone else entirely) Six could have at least pulled off some of the humor he was going for, but Laser is just so atrocious, bordering on unwatchable, that he drags down any comedic potential around him (he's in pretty much every frame of the movie so there's rarely a chance to escape the black hole of his performance). And the movie would still be garbage anyway, since Six' only concern is making sure no one walks out saying "It wasn't as fucked up as I expected".

In fact it's so bad it kind of makes me retroactively dislike the original. Some bad sequels are worthwhile because they just serve as a reminder of how good we had it once upon a time, but my take away from this one is that we were supposed to hate that one too. Had we all done that, maybe Six would have been satisfied with whatever it is he was trying to accomplish and moved on by now. This could have been the newest original film from an intriguing new director, and instead it's a terrible 3rd entry in a series that never should have been one. So what incentive do I have to go back and watch the first, when I'll end up lamenting at what a joke Six had become? I'll just do what I/we should have done in the first place and ignore it.

What say you?

P.S. Sadly this isn't even the worst movie I watched this week. I also suffered through Toolbox Murders 2, which is as good as you can expect a movie that's been on the shelf for four years to be. Within the first 5-10 minutes I was reminded of Ulli Lommel movies like Curse of the Zodiac, so that should be a strong enough warning for you to stay as far the fuck away from it as you possibly can.

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The Vatican Tapes (2015)

JULY 25, 2015

GENRE: POSSESSION, RELIGIOUS
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I can give The Vatican Tapes some props for two things. One is its score from Insidious/Conjuring composer Joe Bishara, which does what the movie itself fails to do and never recalls The Exorcist, instead opting for its own ideas and pulling them off quite well (I even stuck around to listen to it during the credits). The other is that, despite what the trailers suggested, the movie isn't found footage. Not even close to it, in fact. I thought it'd be like a Lovely Molly kind of situation where it divides its time between traditional filmmaking and POV stuff, but apart from a few scenes in the beginning and a rarely used (unmanned, mounted) camera during the exorcism, it's shot like every other movie.

Alas, that's pretty fitting, since the script itself is like every other movie, at least the possession/exorcism ones. It saves its most (only?) interesting elements for its final moments, perhaps setting up a pretty intriguing sequel that we're likely never to see, as the film's sub-million opening weekend take* isn't exactly going to send producers scurrying to get Vatican Tapes 2 off the ground. Instead, director Mark Neveldine (half of the team responsible for Crank and then 3 terrible movies after it) and the script by too many people to remember (though one was Chris Morgan of the Fast & Furious series) spend the majority of the runtime on the same old shit we've seen a million times. Girl (Olivia Taylor Dudley from the also "Wait, it's NOT found footage?" entry Chernobyl Diaries) has an encounter, weird things start happening around her, hospitals get involved, answers are not given, and finally a priest is called in. Would you be surprised to learn that the film's climax involves two priests, a worried parent, and a possessed girl strapped to a bed?

Now, just a few days ago I gave Inner Demons some love, and in many respects it also commits some of the Exor-sins this movie does - so why is one OK and not the other? Well the approach the Inner Demons team took is a big one; the idea of the demon being held at bay by drug use is an intriguing one, and it also justified its POV aesthetic with the inclusion of the reality show team. Here, they can't even use the sparingly used camera properly, with the boyfriend inexplicably filming Angela as he takes her through the house and outside "to show her something" (a surprise birthday party, one she secretly knows about, which at least explains why she doesn't ask why he's filming her walking around). And the narrative has no such hook; there's a brief bit where she appears to be in two places at once at the hospital (sleeping in her bed, and in the nursery, attempting to drown a baby), but it's largely a go nowhere subplot, with Neveldine and his writers content to race through this stuff and get back to ripping off Friedkin and Blatty.

Except for when they opted to rip off ZAZ, of all people. There's a scene at the top of the exorcism sequence where Angela starts to gag and the priest reaches into her mouth, pulling out an egg. Two more follow, and it's basically one of the movie's big "scary" setpieces - and all I could think about was the same scene being played for laughs in Airplane! Somehow the 1980 movie parodied this one 35 years earlier (if the Airplane gag was supposed to be making fun of anything specific in that moment, I never caught the reference, and some Googling didn't help), and it sticks out even more when you realize it's the closest the movie really gets to finding a pulse beyond those final 5 minutes. Neveldine also throws in some GoPro type footage during a brief out-of-control-bus scene that will remind you of the Cranks, and I couldn't help but wonder if there was a disconnect, with him being hired to make the "EXTREME" version of an Exorcist movie and him taking the job to show he could do something besides that sort of thing (kind of like when, with both seeking to do something new, Wes Craven signed on for an Eddie Murphy comedy and Eddie Murphy signed on for a Wes Craven horror movie). These brief moments belong in that hyper-silly/exciting world, not the world of the rest of this interminable affair.

It also wastes the cast. Michael Peña is one of those guys who shows up and makes any movie better (he's great in Ant-Man, the sounds of which were occasionally booming into this tiny screen at the local multiplex), but the script gives him very little to do, particularly during the exorcism sequence where he mostly just stands around and lets the older priest do the fun stuff. Dougray Scott has some fun "overprotective dad" stuff going on with Angela's boyfriend, and the backstory of her mother is fairly novel, but like Peña as the movie continues he is reduced into the background more often than not, and the antagonistic relationship with her boyfriend has no real payoff. Plus (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD) both he and the boyfriend die during the climax with little fanfare, as if they were never important to begin with. Peña at least gets to survive and be the hero of the sequel that exists only in our dreams, as he gets drafted into the secret cabal of Vatican personnel who go around investigating cases like these, while Angela, now revealed as the Antichrist, goes around healing people for some sinister, never to be known agenda.

With the movie offering very little to excite me until that point (the lovely Kathleen Robertson shows up for a bit during the hospital sequence, but these scenes are ultimately inconsequential), I spent a lot of time wondering why so many exorcism movies are content to follow Exorcist's template so rigidly. Here it's even more frustrating since the post-exorcism scenes are the film's best - what if they skipped over the usual crap involving "freak accidents" (birds seem drawn to her) and "The Catholic Church does not perform exorcisms lightly!" type padding where the skeptical priest has to be convinced, and got to where any intelligent audience member knows it was going by the 45 minute mark? Then they could use the rest of the movie on something new, leaving our Exorcist memories largely behind. It's almost comical how, 40+ years later, the most prominent examples of these sort of movies not going by the numbers are the actual Exorcist sequels. Hell, the 3rd one didn't even have an exorcism at all until reshoots were demanded. And then there are The Last Exorcism and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, two that also go off the beaten path and were rewarded with huge box office, as if the public was saying "Yes! Thank you for doing something new!" and were then rewarded with more of the same old crap (Last Exorcism 2 notwithstanding, offering a different kind of crap).

Oh well. I admit I was hardly excited about the movie, as its trailers did nothing for me and I'm no fan of Neveldine's (even Crank is really a one-time only deal for me; I had a lot of fun watching it but never the desire to see it again). But I can be won over when I have low expectations (see, again, Inner Demons, and, keeping with the possession theme, The Atticus Institute from earlier this year), so I could have just as easily walked away a fan of this one if it was putting enough effort into the proceedings. But alas, when your title sequences offer more chills than the movie itself, there's a big problem, and ultimately the film just continues this year's vastly underwhelming output for horror (It Follows might be the best theatrical release and I saw it in 2014!). Nothing is really hate-worthy, but after all these C- types, I almost long for a loathsome piece of shit - at least then I could be engaged on some level.

What say you?

*To be fair it's basically a limited release, at 427 screens or something like that, but the number of theaters isn't as important as the number of people IN those theaters, and that's where the movie's poor showing is plainly evident, with an average of less than 80 people showing up per day at each theater - not even enough to fill one screening. Someone on Twitter told me they were the only person in their theater and the manager tried to get them to leave so they wouldn't have to show it at all!

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Inner Demons (2014)

JULY 21, 2015

GENRE: POSSESSION
SOURCE: STREAMING

If you roll your eyes at nine found footage movies in a row, but enjoy the 10th, does it make it all worthwhile? Inner Demons is not going to challenge Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity as the go-to example for how these movies can be effective, but it's still one of the very few of late that I didn't want to slap, so that's gotta be worth something, right? And it's even more notable when you consider how many possession-driven found footage movies there are (2nd most popular after ghosts, I think); the movie could have been doubling down on its uselessness, but it actually struck a minor chord with me. I'll be seeing The Vatican Tapes this week; if I actually like that one MORE than this I'll be fairly stunned.

Part of what makes this movie work is, thankfully, a decent reason for the cameras to exist. Sure, by the end they're using them in situations where no real human being would (and I think I spotted a few impossible cutaways) but like I've said in the past - you just have to meet us halfway on that one. Give us a solid reason for filming in the first place (many don't) and maintain that movie-logic for a while, until we're hooked into the story, and then it won't really matter as much as long as you're not going overboard (i.e. people standing there filming a zombie biting their friend's face off). This one is particularly interesting - it's presented as the footage from the crew filming an episode of an Intervention-type reality show, with their subject being a formerly sweet, good Catholic girl who started dressing goth and using drugs. As it turns out, the drug use isn't for recreation - she is shooting up in order to control the demon that's taken up residence inside her. When she is sent to rehab, and thus unable to use, her conditions actually worsen.

If anything I wish they had stuck with the intervention angle longer. Given their religious background there's a good reason for a priest to be there, and they could have had the demon dishing out dirt on her friends/family who had assembled to help her, rather than random other patients at the rehab facility. The movie's logic also takes a hit here, as there is plenty of fairly concrete proof that the girl is possessed (or SOMETHING) thanks to the facility's security cameras that give the movie much of its footage during these scenes, but no one bothers to check the tapes I guess. It's only when one of the intervention crew guys gives her a fix to control the demon that things get back on track, as she is kicked out of the rehab center and sent home in time for the big climax. The rehab scenes are fine on their own, but since the other addicts don't get much involved with the story it seems like a missed opportunity for some Bad Dreams/Dream Warriors style character moments, and they could have just locked her in her bedroom and brought a doctor in to serve the same story points.

But the attention to detail is what really makes it work. Director Seth Grossman actually has a background in reality shows (including some work on the actual Intervention), and it serves the opening well, giving us authentic reality show footage along with the behind the scenes dealings in between it (i.e. asking a subject to modify their reply and start over so it's more sound-byte worthy). Grossman did a pretty good job of assembling a believable history and backstory for its fictional characters too - old photos, acquaintances as character witnesses, etc. Horror movies in general (meaning, not just these kinds) tend to suffer from a lack of world-building, where the characters all seem to have been willed into existence moments before the movie began and seemingly have no lives beyond what they are doing in the 80 minutes we're spending with them, so it's nice when a filmmaker takes the time to make his characters a bit more fleshed out and lived in - ESPECIALLY when they're doing it under the guise of "reality".

Another boon: Lara Vosburgh is great as Carson, the infected girl. The Venn diagram of "found footage movies" and "great performances" doesn't have much of an overlap, so it's definitely another happy surprise. She's got a tough role to play - especially when she begs for a fix in order to keep the demon at bay (a literal fix!), as it's kind of heartbreaking that she'd rather risk her own body/mind than become a monster that everyone hates. Throughout the film you see these tiny glimpses of the very sweet girl that's being eroded by both the drugs and the demon, and Vosburgh handles these moments perfectly, never swinging too far into one direction. Grossman keeps the usual possession visuals to a minimum (black eyes, some minor contorting... nothing particularly eye-catching) and wisely let Vosburgh herself be the effect - damn fine choice.

I saw this movie because I was tagging it for Netflix, and my heart sank when I saw it was another FF movie. So I began just kinda keeping one eye on it while I started filling out the form (if you missed previous explanations - tagging is basically plugging in all of the data that allows their computers to make recommendations, in this case it'd probably come up if you liked Last Exorcism), but after 15-20 minutes I realized I was doing myself a disservice by being so technical with my viewing - it deserved a legitimate viewing! It's not the funnest way to watch a film, because you have to be on the alert for things that might not register if you're not actively looking for them (like drinking; if someone has a beer with their dinner it's gotta go on the form - this is not something you notice when you're watching a movie to enjoy it), and that robs you of the experience a bit. Fine for a documentary or maybe even a comedy, but horror is a different beast. Watching it that way is no different than someone pulling out their cell phone in a theater - it's distracting you with reality, and the movie can't get under your skin as effectively. In other words, the movie earned my respect, and after those 15-20 minutes I closed the tagging form and watched it like I would any movie, going back to double check whatever I may have missed later. Sure, it took longer, but I got to see a pretty decent movie as a result! And you guys got a new review, something I can't usually do for the aforementioned reasons.* Win-win.

What say you?

*That might be kinda funny though, review a movie based only on its clinical data. "The problem is, the movie offers plenty of profanity and smoking, but not nearly enough drinking or live music performances. Furthermore, the setting is nondescript..."

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The Gallows (2015)

JULY 9, 2015

GENRE: GHOST, REVENGE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

This will be a (slightly) shorter review than most HMAD entries, because quite frankly, The Gallows didn't give me a lot to work with. I almost didn't bother to write a review at all (was gonna just tweet a few things) but a quick check on Alexa revealed how far the site has plummeted since I stopped updating daily, which is concerning since part of that non-frequency is due to my writing a book that I'll need people to come here on the regular to know when it's available. So you'll get a review of a lousy found footage movie that you can read at a red light, and I'll spare my twitter followers more thoughts on this shockingly flat, long past its prime entry in the now-over POV race.

Oddly, the one thing the movie gets right is that it feels like a genuine video shot by an obnoxious high school kid. As anyone who has read my takes on some of the other major FF releases can vouch for, I particularly hate when there's no logic behind the footage we're seeing - impossible cutaways, people filming things for absolutely no reason just so they can ensure the camera is on when something scary happens, people standing there filming their friends being killed - all of these things drive me up a wall and keep me from engaging in the film. But here, I bought like 75-80% of the footage as something I could imagine filming myself in that situation. One scene even plays out mostly while looking at the characters' feet (attn: fetishists), because they're arguing and that's what people would do if holding a camera up before things got heated - they'd drop it to their side and engage as a human being. It's only in the film's final scene that the camera logic is completely out the window, but by then I stopped caring anyway.

Because while they got the camera right, they screwed up everything else. The movie has almost nothing to it beyond the one line plot synopsis: some kids break into their high school at night, get stuck, and are menaced by the ghost of a kid who died in a school play 20 years ago. There are a couple of reveals concerning why it's after these kids specifically (well, one of them), but it's an empty attempt at making the film more interesting, because (spoiler) the connection our hero has to the original incident involves his father, and that's a character we see briefly, 30-40 minutes before this revelation, and never again. For it to have any meaning, he'd have to re-enter the picture and explain his side of the story, but that doesn't happen. So who cares?

(That it's a reveal even though the picture of his father has been hanging up in the room that he's been practicing a play every day for weeks is something we can just let slide, I guess.)

Dropped characters are just the order of the day in this movie, actually. Early on our hero goes out of his way to film a janitor going about his business and saying "working late tonight?", to which the janitor answers in the affirmative - this seems to establish his presence/another victim for later when they go inside after hours, but nope. Ditto for the Jonah Hill-y stage manager who the protagonist torments (if you haven't guessed by now, the guy with the camera is an asshole), as they are engaged in some back and forth pranking/retaliation that goes nowhere, since he doesn't show up in the locked off school either. I suppose one could defend these things as mere misdirection, but that only works if they're directing your attention away from the real threats or suspects, which do not exist in this one-note movie. It's either padding to fill out the barely feature length run time (an exact 80 minutes, with credits and a scene we see play out twice), or sloppy writing. Take your pick. It's a toss up to me, but I might give "sloppy writing" the edge based on how many jaw-droppingly bad bits of exposition are shoehorned into the dialogue, a problem that starts in the movie's very first scene when an audience member filming a school play (starring his own kid, one would assume) starts talking about how one of the actors was a last minute replacement.

It's also not scary at all. As always I use the audience to gauge the effectiveness of these things to see how well they're working since I'm immune to jumps and such, but the scattered audience members who joined me for this 9:15pm screening were, I guess, equally just annoyed that they were missing Hannibal for this, because I swear I only heard one person shout at one of the scares (far cry from its hilariously overblown ads suggesting that it's the scariest movie ever or whatever). Worse, there's no sense of dread - it's clear who the villain is, more or less what he wants, and the idiotic twist that explains how he connects to one of the other characters is too laughable and out of nowhere to add to the non-existent tension. Even the light supernatural elements about doors that can't be opened fail to register, and I say this as someone who can count sneaking into my own high school after hours (ironically to obtain a videotape) as one of the more intense moments of my adolescence, since I'm sure being caught would result in some sort of major disciplinary action. Shouldn't I be even the slightest bit worked up to see this sort of thing on-screen in a legit horror movie? Having a connection to the material is a key factor in how much you respond to horror movies (hence why I now have trouble with evil/dead children movies since becoming a father), so it's an even bigger indictment of the movie's failures that I was unable to feel anything but apathy.

Thankfully, the trailer's awful "Smells Like Teen Spirit" cover is not included. That and the believable camerawork are about the only positives I could find in this thing. It didn't exactly have a high bar to clear for me to say something like "best wide release found footage movie in years!" (I specify wide release because the indie scene still produces some minor gems, like Afflicted), but it couldn't even manage that. It's maybe better than Paranormal Activity 4 and Devil's Due, but that's about it. This is the sort of movie where I wouldn't even bother yelling at someone for taking out their phone - I'd be thankful that they offered something that actually engaged me.

What say you?

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Ghosthouse/Witchery (1988)

JUNE 28, 2015

GENRE: HAUNTED HOUSE, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

The only thing Italian horror producers did better than rip off American genre movies was shamelessly rename the movies to make them look like sequels to unrelated properties, either for their own distribution or when sending them elsewhere. Sometimes they were their own productions, such as Beyond The Door (a film that got a "sequel" in Shock) and other times they'd piggyback on American franchises. For example, the Evil Dead series was renamed La Casa* over there, and after Evil Dead 2/La Casa 2 was an even bigger draw there than in its native US, they saw fit to continue the series with at least three "sequels", including Ghosthouse (aka La Casa 3) and Witchery (aka La Casa 4, and also Witchcraft, not to be confused with the long-running DTV series). These two are making their blu-ray debut this week, and if it's successful enough maybe Scream Factory can bring us La Casa 5, better (?) known as Beyond Darkness. (UPDATE! I wrote this review all week - see last paragraph for reasons - and a day after I wrote that part Scream indeed announced that the film will be released later this year)

Interestingly, unlike all those demon-less Demons sequels (or the infamous Troll 2), these movies are at least thematically similar to the Evil Dead films - one of them even involves a tape recording! Both involve a bunch of folks meeting up at a creepy place, and in both the evil force wipes out pretty much everyone in a variety of ways. They might lack the energy and creativity of Raimi's films, but if this was 1988 or 1989 and the internet didn't exist to quickly inform me that I was watching something completely unrelated, I'd be... well, not fooled, but at least not as angry as I was when I was 14, buying a movie I was led to believe was a sequel to Dawn of the Dead and seeing some voodoo zombie stuff (that would be Fulci's Zombie - I've since come around). Compared to most of these retitled things, these movies are Saw-level tight with Evil Dead.

Not sure which one I prefer of the two; they're both pretty entertaining, and what could have been a Massachusetts bias in favor of Ghosthouse turned out to be a moot point - Witchery was set there too! They even share a police car from Scituate, which is the (real) seaside town where the films were shot, another thing that makes this fake series almost plausibly connected (they beat Marvel to the punch by like 20 years!). I guess in that regard Ghosthouse would get the edge because it has a few scenes in Boston proper (including a bit at Faneuil Hall), but either way it was a nice surprise - MA-shot films are pretty rare, so I certainly wasn't expecting to see my old neighborhood in a random Italian flick, let alone in two of them.

Ghosthouse also lacks David Hasselhoff. It's not Witchery's fault that he became such a joke, but it was nearly impossible for me to watch it without thinking of the reality show mainstay that is synonymous with "lazy stunt casting" nowadays. In 1988 he was still the handsome hero of a recently ended long-running series (Knight Rider), so it'd be the equivalent of getting someone like Jeff Donovan from Burn Notice today - hardly something to laugh at, and probably helped the movie get sold (whereas now it'd probably be a red flag). He's actually not bad as a photographer who ends up getting trapped in the seaside hotel with his wife, some prospective buyers, and a really bad child actor, but every 5 minutes I'd just get a Baywatch image in my head, or worse, the bloated dude eating a cheeseburger off the floor. Linda Blair is the movie's other big star and thankfully she doesn't have that notoriety - she may always be "the girl from Exorcist" but she never really tainted her brand the way her co-star has. She also gets possessed briefly in the 3rd act, which was a surprise - I figured she'd rather avoid the obvious comparison and skip roles that required such behavior (not counting Repossessed, of course).

The location goes a long way to making up for Hoffstraction, however. I've always been intrigued by big hotels set right on the water; we used to go to Maine in the summer and I knew from the odd trip to check on our trailer (it was one of those family campgrounds - we'd leave our big ass trailer there all year round even though the campground was only open from Memorial Day to Labor Day) that the area was pretty much a ghost town in the off season, so I'd be curious about those giant hotels that had to be completely empty for months on end (my early viewing of The Shining probably informed some of this). But such locales are rarely used in horror films; sadly, Puppet Master is the only other one that readily comes to mind. Unfortunately they don't get too much use of it, holing up in a couple of distinct rooms and limiting the exploration to a few scenes (I think we see more in the mostly horror-free early "tour" we get of the place than we do once the shit hits the fan), but it still makes for an interesting setting. There's a great bit where the witch/ghost thing traps them all inside and shuts all the lights off as a would-be rescue chopper flies overhead - allowing you to see the hotel in all its glory as their searchlight scans all of the windows.

Plus it's about a witch! Maybe I just pick wrong, but it seems the Italians were afraid of being compared to Argento and thus left most of the witching to him, while they tackled zombies and black-gloved killers, plus the odd supernatural silliness (director Fabrizio Laurenti's next film was the incredible killer tree movie Contamination .7, which, sigh, is also known as Troll 3). But not here, it's a legit witch witch carrying out witch-y type killings like crucifying someone and roasting them on an upside down cross (the devil also pops up for good measure). It doesn't make a hell of a lot of conventional sense, but it's tough to pick out the obvious survivor from their introductions, offers some decent gore and various kills, and offers one of the more abrupt attempts at an epilogue I've ever seen (seriously, it's like 12 seconds long and hilariously blunt). And the old bitchy lady gets killed early - I've gotten used to the "let's keep the asshole around so we can build up to a spectacular death!" way of thinking, so it's nice to see a movie that opts to get rid of its unlikable character early and keep only the sympathetic ones around for a while.

As for Ghosthouse, the characters aren't as diverse - buncha twenty-somethings, including two blond guys I had trouble telling apart, leading to some confusion (luckily, one of them is killed off early). But the story, involving a little ghost girl who terrorizes them in typical haunted house ways (including a pretty great bit where the floor breaks apart and a guy nearly drowns in milk), plus a deranged handyman killing people for trespassing for good measure, makes up for the bland protagonists. It also has one of my favorite "doctor explains a death" scenes in movie history, where he tells the cop that a corpse couldn't have been killed by another person due to the angle of the cut on their neck, and thus it HAD to be a piece of the fan breaking off and flying into the guy via centrifugal force (he explains this kind of casually, as if it happens often).

But the real draw is the very odd hitchhiker that our heroes pick up and get rid of on the way to the house. He's pretty delightful for a hitchhiker, probably because he doesn't know how to do it properly - he stands in the middle of the road, for one thing, and later he risks the hero's life by trying to scare him with a skeleton arm thing while he's driving. They get rid of him not long after that, but he returns later, scaring a different character with the same prop before entering the haunted house, scoffing at a bag of cookies in favor of a box of croutons (?), and then gets killed not long after that. His scenes are so disconnected that you'd swear he was added into the narrative after test screenings, but the girl he scared on his second appearance talks about him later, which seems like a detail that they'd skip if it was a late addition (her description is amazing too; her friend doubts she really saw anyone and she's like "He had a skeleton arm!" without explaining it was a toy). I could have watched a whole movie about this guy just goofing off on the fringes of a more exciting storyline.

This fella aside, one thing I liked about the movie is how it split the two groups of protagonists up, letting two of them go back to the city to take the brunt of the less exciting plot development scenes while the rest of the characters wandered around at the house, often getting killed. If everyone stayed together you'd get the long exposition dumps, plus narrative hiccups where people would be getting killed two rooms away from someone sitting there reading an old newspaper or whatever, oblivious to the screaming. I know conventional logic is that a movie is scarier if you get the sense that they are kinda stuck there (like, well, Evil Dead!), and it DOES spoil the mood a bit when the hero goes back to his riverside office in Boston at the halfway point, but again - it keeps it stopping completely cold to deliver pages of backstory at once. And that means we're never too far from hearing the creepy-ass "theme" that accompanies the evil spirit - it sounds like a simple saying being played backwards, over and over along with equally unsettling music. The jump scares and such aren't particularly great here, but that music more than makes up for it (the clown doll is also appropriately "off" - much better than the one in Fauxltergeist). It's rare to enjoy a film for being goofy AND somewhat creepy, so kudos to Umberto Lenzi for pulling it off, even if it wasn't intentional.

Lenzi's usual hatred of "things that make sense" still comes through, however. In addition to characters getting angry over nothing (and forgetting about it a few seconds later), he offers a particularly head-slapping bit where a cop talks on his squad car's CB radio. A common enough scene, but Lenzi inexplicably chose not to include the other side of the conversation, so the cop is sitting there with a two way handset, responding to an unheard voice with things like "When?" and "OK, I'll check that out!" or whatever, as if he was on a phone instead of a device where we should be able to hear the other person speaking. Lenzi has always been one of the more random of this group (which includes Fulci, Lamberto Bava, Claudio Fragrasso, etc.), and you'll be happy to know that this fits in nicely with his others in that respect.

All in all, a perfectly enjoyable double feature of a couple of movies that flew under the radar. By the late 80s, the Italian horror scene was starting to dry up, as they couldn't compete with the bigger budgeted, FX heavy movies the US was making, and there were fewer theatrical distributors for such fare as there was 4-5 years before. And it's not like they could just call Ghosthouse "Evil Dead 3" here, so the rather anonymous title probably did it no favors. Witchery fared SLIGHTLY better, in that I had heard of it a couple of times prior to seeing, but that's probably thanks to its more famous cast. I didn't recognize anyone in Ghosthouse; Witchery offered Blair, Hoff, plus the lovely Catherine Hickland, who was one of those actresses who would seemingly pop up on every TV show in the 80s (including Knight Rider!) and also had sizable roles on some soaps. She gets killed via swordfish, which is pretty great. Perhaps if the movies were more famous Scream would have put a little more effort into the presentation - the transfers are fine, but the movies don't even get their own sub-menus like they usually do for their double features. There's a main screen that offers both "Play Movie" and both trailers, with no scene selection (chapter breaks are included), and the subtitle option obnoxiously located in the center. It's basically what you'd expect from a disc that had a "Play All" option for a true double feature experience, but since it lacks that I can't help but feel it's a bit of a lazy setup.

But that's not really a dealbreaker, and more importantly it kicks off a month's worth of releases from Scream Factory of movies that I haven't seen. Next week is Robot Jox, and the week after that is another double feature: Cellar Dweller and Catacombs, followed by I, Madman, and finally Ghost Town (which also features Ms. Hickland, yay!). More often than not I've seen the movies they're putting out, which is why I usually write about them on Birth Movies Death (formerly Badass Digest) because I've already discussed them here. It's unusual to see so many new-to-me movies in a row (broken up only by Howling II), and they have some new ones too, such as Paul Solet's long awaited sophomore effort, Dark Summer (which I also haven't seen yet). So this place should be a little more lively in the weeks ahead! I apologize for the decreasing number of updates but it's all for a good reason - I've been working really hard to finish my 2nd draft of the HMAD book so I can clean it up and send it off to my editor and hopefully get it to you guys before Christmas (virtual stocking stuffer!). I've been seeing some stuff, but when it comes to time to write, I usually choose the book over writing a new review. Sorry!

What say you?

*In my room I have a giant poster for "La Casa 2" that I got relatively cheap at an auction, because the new title confused the audience that was paying triple digits for similarly oversized art for Dream Warriors and other films of that era. I'm pretty sure they thought it was a poster for House II (the big, Bates House-ish home right in the center of the image probably didn't help), so I was the only bidder and got it for 50 bucks. Score!

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